Why no one may remember speech

When President Barack Obama delivers his second official State of the Union address on Jan. 25, he may continue a long tradition of giving a speech that nobody cares much about.

It is a shame how little SOTUs — as they are called in press parlance — are remembered considering how long they are worked on, how carefully they are crafted and how the president usually drives his staff nuts for months in the creation of each one.

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But ask yourself if you can remember a single memorable line from a State of the Union address.

How about “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”? Naw, that was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address on March 4, 1933.

So how about “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country”? Nope, that was in John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1961.

Then there was Ronald Reagan’s “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Nope, not a SOTU. That was a sound check for NPR.

So what memorable lines from SOTUs are there? Well, we have Bill Clinton’s “The era of Big Government is over” from Jan. 23, 1996. (Less remembered is the important line that came next: “But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.”)

Then we have George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” from his SOTU on Jan. 29, 2002, used to describe North Korea, Iran and Iraq. (“Is our children learning?” was from a speech in Florence, S.C., on Jan. 11, 2000, so that doesn’t count.)

And if you are a real student of history or very, very old, you may remember that James Monroe announced his famous doctrine forbidding European countries to further colonize South America during his seventh SOTU on Dec. 2, 1823. It didn’t make a big splash at the time, perhaps because it came at the end of a pretty long speech (more than 6,300 words).

SOTUs tend to ramble on a bit because they are constantly interrupted — often with no good reason — by applause. And because SOTUs, unlike inaugurations held outside in frigid weather, are usually delivered in the toasty confines of the House of Representatives (which is the venue for the speech because it has more chairs than the Senate), presidents can afford to dawdle.

Obama’s first official SOTU, on Jan. 27, 2010 — he had delivered an “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress” on Feb. 24, 2009, which is a SOTU in everything but name — went on for 71 minutes, among the longest in the past 45 years.